Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Conor, Autism Disorders and Traffic-Related Air Pollution

Photo by Harold L Doherty, Toronto, CN Tower, 2008

Conor Doherty, 1 Day Old, February 20, 1996

Joseph BrantMemorialHospital, Burlington

Photo by Dad

A new study Traffic-Related Air Pollution, Particulate Matter, and Autismpublished online in the JAMA Archives of General Psychiatry examines the relationship between traffic-related air pollution, air quality, and autism. The study researchers found thatChildren with autism were more likely to live at residences that had the highest quartile of exposure to traffic-related air pollution, during gestation and during the first year after birth compared with control children. In the study abstracts the researchers concluded:

"Exposure to traffic-related air pollution, nitrogen dioxide, PM2.5, and PM10 during pregnancy and during the first year of life was associated with autism. Further epidemiological and toxicological examinations of likely biological pathways will help determine whether these associations are causal."

Autism Speaks has issued a news release which comments on the study report:

"Despite an increase in research and funding, “we have not yet fully described the causes of ASD or developed effective medical treatments for it,” Dr. Dawson writes. “[This issue’s] articles point to an urgent need for more autism funding. We especially need more research on prenatal and early postnatal brain development in autism, with a focus on how genes and environmental risk factors combine to increase risk for ASD.” ..... Research presented in this issue reports a three-fold increase in autism risk associated with exposure to high levels of traffic-related air pollution during pregnancy and the first year of life. The study’s lead author, Heather Volk, Ph.D., M.P.H., is the recipient of an Autism Speaks research grant to study autism risk and gene-environment interactions involving air pollution." [Bold, underlining added -HLD]

The possible association between autism and traffic related air pollution is of specific interest to me. We were living in Burlington, Ontario when my wife Heather was pregnant with our now 16+ son Conor who has severe Autistic Disorder. We moved back to Fredericton, New Brunswick 4 months after Conor's first birthday. Burlington is located between Hamilton and Toronto, Ontario off the Queen Elizabeth Highway, the QEW, which runs between those two cities. It is one of the busiest automobile traffic areas in Canada.

"Mice breathing the air downwind from Hamilton's two big steel mills were found to have significantly higher mutation rates in their sperm, a new Health Canada-led study says. While there's no evidence that residents of the area are experiencing the same genetic changes, the project's lead author says the findings do raise that question. "We need to do that experiment and find out," said Carole Yauk, a research scientist with Health Canada. A future study will look at "DNA damage in the sperm of people living in those areas."

...

Dr. Rod McInnes, director of genetics at Canadian Institutes of Health Research, said the mice could be "the canary in the coal mine" signalling the genetic risks to humans of breathing toxic air. ... While genetic changes in sperm would not affect a male directly, they'd get passed on to the offspring that receive his DNA. The story reports on a study indicating that the mice living under the Burlington skyway downwind from 2 Hamilton steel mills and breathing the air from those mills for a period as short as 10 weeks were found to have significant sperm mutations."

I was interested enough in the Hamilton steel mill's air pollution study that I contacted Dr. Yauk referenced in the Toronto Star article quoted above. Dr. Yauk was kind enough to reply to my email in some detail:

"Dear Mr. Doherty,

I'm very sorry to hear of your son's autism. Certainly many of the chemicals emitted from the steel industry into the air are highly mutagenic. There are numerous sources of mutagenic chemicals in that evironment (emissions from the cars/trucks on the QEW will be high as well), and we have definite plans to follow-up our earlier results. At the moment, we are applying for funding to continue the research. There will be 2 arms of work: one on mice to try to look at a full panel of potential health effects and causative agents, and the other will begin to look at DNA damage and changes in sperm from men living in the area. One of the things that I would like to investigate is whether there is evidence of large rearrangements and gains and losses in DNA regions in mice breathing air in that environment. These types of mutation have been shown to be associated with autism in an earlier study from another group (and various

other types of diseases). However, these experiments are extremely expensive, and we have not been successful in obtaining funding as of yet (it is very competitive these days to get grants). Hopefully we'll have some success soon - I am optimistic as we have an outstanding panel of investigators on the project from McMaster University, McGill, and Health Canada.

Thank you for your interest. Please feel free to email me again in the future.

Best regards,

Carole

Carole Yauk, Ph.D.

Research Scientist, Health Canada

Adjunct Professor, Carleton University

Associate Editor, Environmental and Molecular Mutagenesis.

Environmental Health Centre"

The gene environment model of autism causation has gained ground in recent years. Autism Speaks deserves some credit for this advance with its more balanced funding of genetic and environmental studies.

Scientists like Dr. Carole Yauk, Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto, Dr. Heather Volk, Dr. Philip J. Landrigan and Dr. Linda Birnbaum are the people advancing our knowledge of possible causes of autism disorders. This father of an autistic son salutes them and wishes them well in their never ending efforts to enhance our understanding of the environmental factors contributing to the very real autism crisis confronting our children.

101 Noteworthy Sites on Asperger's & Autism Spectrum Disorders

Facing Autism on Facebook

Why ABA For Autism?

The effectiveness of ABA-based intervention in ASDs has been well documented through 5 decades of research by using single-subject methodology21,25,27,28 and in controlled studies of comprehensive early intensive behavioral intervention programs in university and community settings.29–40 Children who receive early intensive behavioral treatment have been shown to make substantial, sustained gains in IQ, language, academic performance, and adaptive behavior as well as some measures of social behavior, and their outcomes have been significantly better than those of children in control groups.31–4American Academy of Pediatrics, Management of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

"We have to look also at environmental factors, and from my point of view, the interaction between the genetic factors and the environmental factors ... It looks like some shared environmental factors play a role in autism, and the study really points toward factors that are early in life that affect the development of the child"
Joachim Hallmayer, MD, associate professor of psychiatry at Stanford University in California

Even Out Environmental and Genetic Autism Research Funding

Right now, about 10 to 20 times more research dollars are spent on studies of the genetic causes of autism than on environmental ones.

We need to even out the funding.

Irva Hertz-Picciotto, UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute Researcher

My Autism Pledge For Conor

Today I pledge to continue;I Pledge to continue to fight for the availability of effective autism treatments;I Pledge to continue to fight for a real education for autistic children;I Pledge to continue to fight for decent residential care for autistic adults;I Pledge to continue to fight for a cure for autism;I Pledge to continue finding joy in my son but not in the autism disorder that restricts his life;Today, and every day, I Pledge to continue to hope for a better life for Conor and others with autism, through accommodation, care, respect, treatment, and some day, a cure;Today, and every day, I Pledge to continue to fight for the best possible life for Conor, my son with autistic disorder.

Dr. Jon Poling : Blinders Won’t Reduce Autism

"Fortunately, the ‘better diagnosis’ myth has been soundly debunked. ... only a smaller percentage of this staggering rise can be explained by means other than a true increase.

Because purely genetic diseases do not rise precipitously, the corollary to a true autism increase is clear — genes only load the gun and it is the environment that pulls the trigger. Autism is best redefined as an environmental disease with genetic susceptibilities."

We should be investing our research dollars into discovering environmental factors that we can change, not more poorly targeted genetic studies that offer no hope of early intervention. Pesticides, mercury, aluminum, several drugs, dietary factors, infectious agents and yes — vaccines — are all in the research agenda.